Monday 21 May 2007

Arrived in Windhoek

Alright, we made it to Windhoek, Namibia! It was a 10-hr flight on a half-empty plane from London to Johannesburg, South Africa. We had 3 hours to kill at Joburg airport, so Zoe decided to see if she could track down an old friend who'd she lost contact with 15 years ago when she moved to Canada and he moved to South Africa. We found the only telephone directory at the airport and started calling all the "P. Middletons" listed. The third call was the luck one, and we found him! It was great to chat and catch up; too bad it wasn't a long enough stay to visit him.

Somehow we got bumped up to First Class for our 2-hour flight from Joburg to Windhoek and were royally treated. We even sat between two members of the Namibian parliament.

We're making a habit of leaving countries just before major sporting events. We left Ottawa just before the Sens reached the Stanley Cup final (I hope, they were up 3-0 when we left). We left England the day before the FA Cup final, and even passed by Wembley Stadium on the train on the way into London. And we left South Africa hours before the "rugby match of the century", the first all-South African Super-14 final between the Sharks and the Bulls. The Super-14 is contested between the best rugby clubs from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and an all-South African final would be like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final between the Sens and Leafs, (if it were possible).

Windhoek is a pretty sleepy country town, not really like a capital city - even quieter than Ottawa. We've wandered around town seeing the oldest church and the Parliament buildings (photos to be added later). The weather is perfect - sunny and not a cloud in sight all day - a pleasant 20-25 deg C. It's very desert-like so it gets quite cold at night.

We've just finalized preparations for our two-week trip into the desert. We pick up our rental car at 9 a.m. tomorrow. We'll be out of contact for two weeks, but hope to have lots of good photos to share next time.

Friday 18 May 2007

Longitude Zero: The Journey Starts Here

Where better to start our trip than at zero longitude at the prime meridian at Greenwich? We wanted to try out our new GPS that we had bought to help us find our way across the salt pans in Botswana. From Zoe's parents house we took a trip into London and visited the Greenwich Observatory. The photo is of us straddling the meridian one foot in both east and west hemispheres. By the end of this trip hopefully we will have straddled the equator too with one foot in both the north and south hemispheres!


With zero degrees longitude on our GPS we were 100m west of the Greenwich meridian, it's in the wrong place! The Greenwich Observatory needs to be moved!! We took a photo of our GPS to prove we were at zero degrees, zero minutes and zero seconds (see bottom line of the display)!



While at the Observatory we learnt all about the history of longitude and accurate timepieces not affected by the wave motion, so that seafarers could calculate their longitude and position at sea.


We also visited the maritime museum at Greenwich and walked along the Thames past the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.


We are flying to Windhoek, Namibia tonight. Because we'll be in the southern hemisphere tomorrow we'll wake up in winter but the weather network forecasts 20-25C and sunny every day in Windhoek! Just right for travelling! Next stop Africa!

Monday 14 May 2007

Trip details














Here's the rough itinerary of our travels. Follow along the red dotted line on the map!

We'll arrive in Windhoek, Namibia on May 20th. We're renting a car for two weeks in Namibia and plan to visit several national parks. We'll go to Sossusvlei in the south, to the Skeleton coast in the west, and then Etosha National Park in the north of the country. We may see if we can take a hiking trip in the Fish River Canyon, (second-largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon) in the very south of the country at some point.

Then we'll cross into Botswana where we'll visit the Okavango Delta and rent a four-wheel drive jeep to explore the salt flats near Maun. From there we'll head north to the Botswana/Zambia/Zimbabwe border and visit Victoria Falls.

Next it's on to Lusaka, Zambia, via bus and towards Malawi, hopefully spending a few days in the parks alongside Lake Malawi.

Towards the end of June we plan to cross into Tanzania and in early July we hope to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Following that, we'll spend some time in the Ngorogoro crater, then do a four-day hike across the Serengeti Plain.

Then we'll take a short beach holiday in Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, before hopping across the border into Kenya. Our main goal in Kenya will be to climb Mt. Kenya, the second-highest mountain on the continent, after Kilimanjaro.

From there, we'll cross into Uganda, where we'll take a multi-day hike in the Mt. Elgon region, hopefully climbing that mountain. We'll cross to the western side of Uganda to visit a couple of national parks, and hopefully have the opportunity to see some mountain gorillas.

Finally, we'll bus it back to Nairobi, Kenya, and another mini-beach holiday near Mombasa, before returning to Nairobi and flying home via London at the end of August.

Phew! As I said, that's the current plan, but who knows where we'll end up! So often we meet people who rave about a place not to be missed or we read about somewhere off the beaten path and we alter course to visit it. We have twice planned, as part of 2 previous trips to South East Asia, travels down the east coast of Malaysia but have still yet to visit it! The first time we had unwhittingly planned to travel that way during the monsoon season and arrived to find everything closed for the season and hardly the sunny weather we had expected. The second attempt we got as far as an island off the coast for a few days rest on a beach but landed up staying on the beach for 2 weeks it was so nice and forwent the east coast trip yet again!

Friday 11 May 2007

Baggage!

I arrived safely in London yesterday. The flight from Ottawa was fast, the flight had to leave 1/2hr late so that we would not arrive before Heathrow was open! It was actually clear when we flew in over London and I had great views of the Thames snaking through London, Tony Blair's legacy; the London Eye and Millennium Dome, London Bridge & Tower of London and many other famous landmarks, I could even pick out Buckingham Palace and The Albert Hall.

I had been worrying I am carrying too much stuff on this trip. Normally we like to travel with just a day pack but since we are planning to camp a lot so we are lugging a bunch of camping stuff around too. But now I've changed my mind though...............while I was waiting outside the terminal for my parents to pick me up a van and a car pulled up and a guy starting unloading suitcase after suitcase. I thought it must be the luggage for a whole hockey team or soccer team or something, there must have been 40 cases stacked up on the 3 porter's trolleys. Turns out it was just a family of 4 (I suspect diplomats). So now with my one rucksack I feel like I'm travelling super light!